Twitch Personality Spends Thirty-Seven Straight Trying to Beat <em>The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom</em> Using a Single Stick

One could think that after two years since Tears of the Kingdom debuted, fans would have run out of novel challenge runs that impose unique restrictions on a playthrough. Yet, while numerous gamers have attempted to finish Tears of the Kingdom using just a wooden stick, content creator PointCrow stands out as the player who aimed to clear the adventure with a one branch—specifically, the exact same stick throughout.

The streamer is famous for such difficult playthroughs, such as the instance he played the title solely with bombs or the effort where he aimed to defeat the game with no stamina. A one-branch run, though, sounds unfeasible at face value. There's the opening sequence, which requires Link to use the legendary blade. Additionally, there's the entire weapon wear mechanic, which is particularly important when dealing with the most fragile weapon in the whole game. Yet if the branch shatters, that's the end. Game over.

So, How?

So, how? The straightforward explanation is glitches. The complete answer, believe it or not, is parallel universes. It turns out, you can tweak the game's saving mechanism to have separate playthroughs that impact one another. So PointCrow does a “setup” file where he progresses standardly, and the actual save, where he's limited. The setup save has him completing the intro and initial starting area, and this character acquires full stamina and health. From here, he starts a cinematic and pauses partway through to instruct the game to load an auto-save from the stick file. The system gets confused and generates a third save file that merges the states of the original two.

That causes new issues, though. The fused file has a protagonist that did not acquired the capability to access shrines. Luckily, this is something that the save glitch addresses easily, but pulling it off means relying on an unstable version of the game that refuses to open some areas. Like everything else, he has a technical workaround for it: He starts the game on its early 1.0 build, and then updates the game partway through to make sure it begins working properly.

Overcoming Durability and Additional Hurdles

Curiously, the introductory form of the hero is programmed so that he cannot damage any weapons he uses, presumably to avoid a situation where the player gets trapped at the start of the adventure. But that's also how PointCrow bypasses the durability problem, as the character he transfers across dimensions is the one from the beginning of the game. It's a clever trick, but not a method that eradicates all potential difficulty. The branch is nonetheless a weak item that makes encounters onerous. But at that stage, it's all a question of grit and dedication. It also helps that there's a copying exploit that grants him an abundant number of items to boost his attack, or stock up on revival fairies. He additionally employs a bug that enables Link to phase through the world. A few would consider these means reason to discredit the legitimacy of the attempt, but to my view, he's a inventive gamer who is willing to do whatever it takes to entertain his audience. He also implements a safeguard of sorts stipulating that, for each fairy he employs, he'll remove one viewer from his Twitch chat, creating an incentive to not overly rely on them.

Boss Fights and the Last Showdown

The streamer manages to defeat several of the game's main enemies, but the battles look grueling. The YouTube edit of his journey spares the audience sit through the entire fights, which is a blessing when some of them last several hours. A particular boss fight, a powerful foe, requires an astonishing 23 hours. The final villain showdown, which depletes Link's hearts as it unfolds, is a notable nail-biter. The unbreakable stick is still just a piece of wood. He can't necessarily duplicate items midway the fight.

So, is it possible? Technically, he does defeat the dragon version of the antagonist. But the software forces the player to wield the Master Sword as the final strike, so technically, it's not quite fully a stick-only run. But where's the challenge in that?

When everything is said and done, the streamer removed more than 1,000 users in his live stream. Rest in peace.